English in Print from Caxton to Shakespeare to Milton

1. Early English Printing

e a r l y e n g l i s h p r i n t i n g 47 1 early english printing 1.1 The Brut. Manuscript, England, c. 1450. Matheson 1998, 81, 120. Shelfmark: uiuC Pre-1650 ms 116. 1.2 Chronicles of England. [London: William de Machlinia, 1486?] bmC xi, 261; ESTC s121384; Goff C-480; GW 6673; ISTC ic00480000; STC 9993. Shelfmark: uiuC Incunabula 942 C468 1486. When printed books became available, scriptoria did not close their doors. On the contrary , manuscripts went on being produced — and sometimes preferred by their owners —throughout the fifteenth century.These two copies of the same text,one a manuscript, the other an early printed edition, exemplify the many continuities between early printed books and their manuscript forebears. Both books present the text of the Chronicles of England, also known as The Brut. The Brut is simple to describe—it is a history of England beginning with its legendary founder,Brutus—but its textual history is complex.The earliest versions,the Anglo-French Roman de Brut by Wace in 1155 and the Middle English poetic Brut by Layamon (early thirteenth century), stem from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s (d. 1154) Historia regum Britanniae . Thereafter, the most popular version is the fourteenth-century Middle English prose Brut, an anonymous text that survives in some 181 manuscripts. Not surprisingly, the text varies somewhat depending on where, when, and by whom the chronicle was written 48 C a t a l o g o f t h e e x h i b i t i o n down or printed. There are Bruts with pro-Lancastrian biases and Bruts with pro-York biases; there are Bruts in Anglo-Norman, Welsh, and Latin, as well as the more common text in English. The history is sometimes updated to the time of its production, resulting in a different terminus ad quem for various manuscript groups or editions. Early modern historians of England such as Edward Hall (1497 –1547) and Raphael Holinshed (c. 1525–80) incorporated The Brut into their histories, and it continues to serve as a source for historians. England’s first printer, William Caxton, published the editio princeps of The Brut in 1480; his version brings the historical account up to the year 1461. Caxton published a second edition in 1482.Thereafter,editions appeared in quick succession from the presses of the St.Albans Printer (c.1485),William de Machlinia (1486),Wynkyn de Worde (1497), and even from Gerard de Leew in Holland (1493). William de Machlinia (fl.1482–90),the printer of the 1486 edition shown here,may have learned his trade from John Lettou, the earliest printer working in the City of London . Lettou was probably not English (his name means “Lithuanian”in Middle English), and De Machlinia was probably from Mechlin in the Low Countries. They collaborated 1.2, fol. e5v e a r l y e n g l i s h p r i n t i n g 49 on publishing law books in French and Latin. After 1483, De Machlinia began to print on his own, adding English books to his output and thereby becoming the first printer to produce an English book in the City of London.(Caxton was at Westminster,just outside the City of London.) Although De Machlinia clearly used Caxton’s first edition as his source text, it is nonetheless instructive to compare a manuscript and an incunable of the same text. Early printers imitated the handwriting of medieval scribes with their typefaces and adopted manuscript conventions in designing page layouts.The same passage in the manuscript and the 1486 imprint reveals the similarities in book design, despite some textual differences (the manuscript offering more detail on the coronation and character of King Arthur in this case). The printed edition belonged to the printer and designerWilliam Morris (1834–96),who found models for his own designs in several magnificent books from the incunabular age. Literature: Carlson 1993, 123–41; Clair 1965, 31–34; König 1987; Matheson 1998, 1–56. 1.3 Marcus Tullius Cicero. De Senectute. De amicitia. With the De vera nobilitate of Buonaccorso da Montemagno the Younger. [Westminster: William Caxton, 12 August 1481.] bmC xi, 119; ESTC s106523; Goff C-627; GW 6992; ISTC ic00627000; STC 5293. Shelfmark: uiuC Incunabula 871 C7 ob.ew. Printing presses operated in nearly seventy towns on the Continent before...